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Posted October 05, 2010 to photo album "Made in Brooklyn: A Slide show of films about Brooklyn"

For directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, filming It’s Kind of a Funny Story in Brooklyn was essential to the story. It was a choice many filmmakers before them made as well.

Little Odessa (1994) | Brighton Beach

Previous films have often portrayed the Jewish neighborhoods of Brighton Beach in the soft nostalgia light of comedy––think Gene Saks’ adaptation of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoir. But James Grey’s 1994 debut, Little Odessa, unveiled the hard reality of this neighborhood that has become a haven for the Russian mob. In the film, Joshua Shapiro (Tim Roth) is forced to return home to Brighton Beach to commit an assassination. But his conflict doesn’t come from his criminal identity, but having to deal with his family, a traditional Jewish family who’s not thrilled with his gangster way of life. James Gray, who was only 24 when he made the film, brought to a light a part of Brooklyn few had seen before.

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